Tuesday, January 27, 2009

eek

I realized something yesterday...this year is the "Year of the Ox", which means my baby brother is turning 24 this year. Damn I'm old.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Wakuriya

Last week I finally went to Wakuriya, a Japanese restaurant about two miles from my house.

The menu is pretty simple; there's an eight-course kaiseki, and there's a six-course subset. Of course, I opted for the full eight courses. There was no way I was going to remember everything, so I took a photo of the menu:


Everything was good, and I enjoyed the meal very much, but I don't feel like going course-by-course so I'm just going to highlight a few:

- The appetizer course was nicely plated, and I liked the hotate salad and the kurobuta pork very much. The celery root and mushroom salad was too mayonnaise-y and I'm not a fan of unagi so I redistributed the rolls.


- I really liked the sake gelee. It was very simple but very tasty. At first I thought the serving was pretty big for what I thought was a glorified palate cleanser, but in the end I was happy to eat it all.


- The snow crab donburi was very good, and I suspect I would have liked it even more if I liked the taste of egg yolk. The chunks of crab were hearty and fresh and delicious.


- Surprise, surprise, I liked the dessert. Actually I wasn't that excited reading the menu, because as much as I like green tea, I'm getting a little bit tired of it. And, honestly speaking, the green tea mousse part wasn't all that exciting, but the black sugar sauce was really interesting and yummy, and the strawberry mochi was creative and well-executed, as well.


The service was excellent; really attentive and the server was constantly asking if everything was good and if we were enjoying it. It was almost a little too attentive; I sometimes feel guilty when I feel like people are waiting on me too much. Also, everyone else in the (tiny, four-table) restaurant was Japanese, and I was very amused by the extensive bowing scenes that took place whenever the Japanese customers finished their meals and departed the restaurant.

The waitress told us that the menu changes every month, so we should come back in February. I somehow doubt that I'll make it back so soon, especially given the price, but maybe later in the year, if the opportunity arises...

driving stick, take 4

Before Sunday, I'd attempted to drive stick three times before.

The first time, I was interning in California and a coworker volunteered to teach me. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend and she had chosen the make, model, and color (a pinky-purple shade) of his car, so understandably he was not too fond of it at that moment. I only managed to shift a few times in the company parking lot before getting frustrated and heading to lunch.

The second time, I was in Taipei, and I asked my parents to sign me up for driving school, figuring that since all driving classes in Taiwan are taught using stick shifts, it was a great way to learn. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my limited Chinese vocabulary did not include the words for "clutch", "accelerator", and other important terms, so the instructor thought I was retarded and overall the lesson went quite badly.

The third time, I was in France. We had a rental car which was a stick shift, and I figured I could pick it up as we went along. Unfortunately the people in the back seat got a little nervous about the idea after I accidentally got into reverse in the parking lot, and I was quickly relieved of driving duty.

On Sunday, I coerced a friend who recently inherited a new BMW into teaching me (and two other friends) on his old Jetta. Due to some combination of circumstances (maybe he was just a better teacher, or maybe the car was easier to drive, or maybe it was less pressure to have three people learning at once), we all managed to do respectably well. We drove around in circles on Oracle Parkway for nearly two hours, stopping at stop signs and shifting up and down gears, before yielding the driver's seat in order to head home (I live on a pretty big hill).

Anyway, I'm pretty psyched right now about the whole driving stick thing, but we'll see if it lasts.

Friday, January 23, 2009

feeling gleeful

About a year and a half ago I moved from an area with lots of high speed internet choices to an area with far fewer choices. Originally I had Speakeasy DSL which was awesome and amazing and recommended by me to everyone. After the move, I was stuck with Comcast cable internet, which made me very unhappy, because I hate Comcast with a passion. Not only do they have horrible and clueless phone support, they charge $50 every time a technician comes to visit, they have sketchy bait-and-switch pricing schemes, and one time when the Comcast guy came to "fix" our internet service he "accidentally" broke our satellite TV connection. Yeah, right.

Sometime last December, we received a letter from Comcast saying that the rate on our internet service ($42/month) was a "mistake" and that it would be changed to the "correct" price of $58/month, effective in January. The letter was printed, with color graphics. I sincerely doubt that we were the only customers to receive it. Anyway, it went on to say that we could elect to add cable TV service, and if we did so, instead of being charged $58/month for just internet, we would pay $52/month for both internet and TV. Of course, the catch was that the $52/month rate would only apply for a year.

That was motivation enough for me to start researching ISP alternatives again, and I was surprised and happy to find that AT&T DSL was available in our area. I promptly ordered AT&T service, and the technician enabled our line, but my old Speakeasy/Covad DSL modem unfortunately didn't work with AT&T's service, so I had to wait another few days until AT&T could send me a new modem (which, incidentally, was free with a 1-year contract).

The modem arrived yesterday afternoon, and after dinner and games with some friends, I started configuring the new connection around midnight. After going through the installation process (which unfortunately required a Windows machine and Internet Explorer, so I had to dig up a laptop), and debugging the PPPoE settings for a bit, I finally got everything working around 1am. This made me ridiculously happy. I felt like I was finally free! I didn't get to bed until 2am because I was aimlessly surfing the web, just reveling in our new faster, Comcast-less internet. Yeah, I'm a huge geek.

We got Comcast cancelled the next morning. Yay!! Take that, stupid Comcast policies!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

changes

From my sister's chat status today:

"Take the evil out the people they'll be acting right
'cause both black and white is smokin' crack tonight
and only time we chill is when we kill each other
it takes skill to be real, time to heal each other
And although it seems heaven sent
We ain't ready, to see a black President..."
-- 2pac


I remember that being one of my favorite songs at some point. I guess it was a long time ago.

Here's to more changes, over the next four years, and beyond!

Monday, January 19, 2009

don't wanna grow up

There's been a outbreak of 1st birthday invites recently, and they are conspiring to make me feel old. Perhaps as a result, I had a particularly good time two weekends ago at a 30th birthday party which was designed to make us feel like kids again.

We started at LOL Parties, at Silver Creek Sportsplex in San Jose. I think between 20-30 people showed up to tackle an inflatable obstacle course, followed by a basketball game inside of a bouncy castle, and then several games of high-intensity dodgeball. My favorite was the basketball game, but all three events were fun and exhausting, and only a few people got noticeable plastic-burns. At this point I was pretty sweaty and gross, but managed to get into a Gold's Gym with a free one-day pass to shower and change. (As an aside, the guys at Gold's seem to be pretty lax about visitors, or maybe just with women.)

Next, we descended on Oakridge Mall to participate in a scavenger hunt. It was quite impressively organized, with each team getting matching sunglasses, play-doh (to build a doll representing the "birthday boy"), and a list of clues indicating certain photos/videos which we were supposed to acquire. After being mistaken for teenagers by one saleslady (woo-hoo!) and nearly being thrown out of Macy's by security (boo!), we wrapped up the hunt and headed over to Buca di Beppo's for dinner. That turned out to be an excellent choice as we were all starving, and managed to finish nearly of the food, which is pretty much unheard of at Buca's. We also had cake and prizes, and generally had a great time all around. Yay for 30th birthdays!

runs in the family

As you may have noticed by now, I am slightly obsessive about food. Well, it runs in the family...we all appreciate good food and love to eat, and sometimes when we go out to dinner it's a bit of a scene with all the cameras at the table.

Anyway, on Saturday, my sister and I met up with two of our cousins (one local, one in town from NYC) at Foreign Cinema for brunch. We were tempted by the fresh oysters but decided to pass in favor of splitting two appetizers. The first was a house made "pop tart" with kumquat filling, dusted with powdered sugar (which for once I managed not to inhale). It was light and flaky and delicious, and easily split amongst the four of us. Next we had a beef carpaccio which had some kind of thin fried onions or potatoes on top. I think each of us could have eaten the whole plate, but we resisted. Finally, as my entree, I had the "baguette french toast". Normally I am not a big fan of egg-y breakfast food, but this french toast managed to be egg-y and yummy at the same time, and I ended up licking the plate clean.

After brunch we managed to shop all afternoon with only a coffee break, so we were pretty hungry by dinnertime. We met up with our aunt and uncle in Belmont and ate at a small Vietnamese place called Chez Saigon, on El Camino near Ralston. I had heard of it somewhere before, so although the Yelp reviews were mixed, we decided to give it a chance (partially because Red Lantern was crazy busy that night). We were very happy with that decision. I believe we ordered two appetizers, five main dishes, and two side dishes, and they were all good, but my favorites were the shaken beef, the lemon beef, the fried calamari appetizer, and the side of garlic noodles (of which we had two). Given its location (maybe a couple of miles from my house?) I think I'll definitely stop by again.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

obsession of the week

Last night I had some people over to watch 海角七號 (aka Cape No. 7), a Taiwanese movie by new director Wei Te-Sheng.

The plot follows two tracks: The present day storyline involves a musician who failed to make it big in Taipei and is returning home to Hengchun (in southern Taiwan) to replace the local mailman. He is recruited into a local band formed specifically to serve as an opening act for a visiting Japanese singer, and eventually strikes up a relationship with the band's manager, a Japanese former model. At the same time, he discovers a packet of love letters which were written 60 years ago by a Japanese man to a Taiwanese woman, during the Japanese surrender of Taiwan to the KMT.

The movie came out in Taiwan last summer and promptly became the second-highest grossing movie there in history (behind Titanic). The DVD was released in December, just in time for me to buy it during my annual visit.

I must admit that my curiosity was piqued partially because the movie was banned in China due to its semi-positive depiction of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, but it also won several Golden Horse awards and has been submitted to the Academy Awards as Taiwan's entry for Best Foreign Film.

Anyway, a couple post-viewing comments follow.

Of the group that watched the movie yesterday, everyone understood Mandarin fairly well. Most understood Taiwanese, and a few understood bits of Japanese. The movie was subtitled (not too horribly) in English, but I felt like understanding Taiwanese definitely contributed to greater enjoyment of the movie. Sometimes the Taiwanese expressions were significantly more colorful than the English translations, and some local flavor was lost even between Taiwanese and Mandarin. The dialogue rang true to me; even when it was crass it was authentically so.

I liked that the movie demonstrated the fluent Japanese of the older generation in Taiwan. My own grandparents are a perfect example; they all have cute Japanese nicknames and when they are together with their brothers and sisters, they speak mixed Japanese and Taiwanese. Their Mandarin is passable but awkward. That's Taiwan.

I thought the music in the movie was good. I did some research and found that the main character Aga was played by an actual musician, and several of the other actors also had real musical backgrounds, including the Japanese singer Atari. During the movie, I realized I had actually heard the last song already, while at karaoke in Taipei with my cousins, and I had liked it then too. I enjoyed the other (more upbeat) piece as well.

The movie was funny, but not in a slapstick way, and the characters were engaging. The 80-year old retired mailman was hilarious, and Aga's stepfather was also amusing (although he reminded me of some of my own annoying relatives, so sometimes it was harder to laugh). Often, modern Taiwanese movies take themselves too seriously, and this one did not.

My biggest complaint was that the backstory involving the love letters wasn't well developed and I wasn't sympathetic to the writer of those letters. I also disliked the cheesy music that played whenever the letters were read. The relationship between Aga and the Japanese manager Tomoko kind of came out of nowhere as well, but the two actors did a pretty good job of selling it towards the end, so that particular flaw wasn't as distracting.

The nicest surprise was the cinematography. Parts of Taiwan are really gorgeous but I never get to see them because I'm always in Taipei. Watching this movie made me want to make an effort to explore other parts of the island (while not being dragged there by my parents). I'm hoping that motivating effect lasts until next year.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

real journalism

Yesterday I clicked on a link in a friend's chat status, and found an unexpectedly thought-provoking article. It was written by Lasantha Wickramatunge, a leading Sri Lankan journalist, predicting his own death. Three days later, he was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.

In reading his article and reading about his life, I was reminded of how important good journalism is, in establishing and maintaining a free society. TIME reports that "His death has galvanized the growing anger among the press and other civil-society groups in Sri Lanka about restrictions on free expression in the country and intimidation of the media." I hope they are correct.

And, I hope that similarly courageous and talented journalists exist in Taiwan. They are sorely (and increasingly) needed, to keep the government in check during these tumultuous times.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

still need more sleep?

I was kinda tired after a nice dinner with friends on Friday night (at The Village Pub in Woodside; yummy crab salad and duck breast, decidedly mediocre dessert), so I went to sleep around 12:30am. On Saturday morning, I was woken up at 11:30am and told that I was about to be late for a birthday party. That caused a bit of scrambling on my part, but I managed to get out the door quickly and everything worked out in the end.

So yeah...every so often I forget to set my alarm clock and then I realize I really, really do need it. Sigh.

Friday, January 09, 2009

too late!

Speaking of Taiwan, while visiting Yeh-Liu last week, I came across this sign which I found amusing:


It's very Asian of the stick figure to have already fallen off the edge.

sea kittens and other meats

I wonder if PETA has considered that its campaign to rebrand fish as sea kittens might make fish-lovers more likely to try eating kittens? I myself do not like fish, unless it is good and raw. (I guess PETA could be suggesting that raw kitten would be delicious?)

Last week, however, I did have the opportunity to try some horse at a sushi restaurant in Taipei:


That's two pieces of raw horse over rice, over there on the right. Unfortunately, it turns out that I am not a fan. I can eat raw beef by the pound, and I liked raw venison the one time I had it, but I found the horse meat sour, although it was more tender than I had expected. Oh well, now I know.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

magical mystery fruit

At lunch today, a friend was talking about a "mystery fruit" she had tried over the holidays. Supposedly it makes other things (consumed up to 30 minutes afterwards) which are normally sour, taste sweet.

When I went back to my desk I looked for more information and found that ThinkGeek is selling them in pill form. I'm tempted to buy a box to try, but I actually really like sour food (mmm...raw lemon) so I'm not sure I would even enjoy the effect. Hmm...

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Taiwan drivers

I just got back Sunday night from 10 days in Taiwan. I spent the whole time living with my parents at our place in Taipei, which annoyed me beyond belief, but it was still a good time; hung out with cousins and other relatives, went on a couple of excursions outside the city, and ate *tons* of yummy food.

I was amused by the following exchange which took place on the day before I left:
me (sarcastically): Mom! You stopped for a red light!
Mom (dead serious, paraphrased from Chinese): I have to practice. I'm going back to the US in a week and I'll forget if I don't.

 

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